The practice of church-state relations that has developed in Russia has long been a source of concern for atheists and even some anti-clerical believers. In this regard, the question seems to be very important: what future awaits such a state and such a church? It sometimes seems to contemporaries that a vicious system can be mothballed almost forever. In this article, we will show that such a scenario is more than unlikely.
First, it seems obvious that both the state and the church in modern Russia are striving for total control over the minds. The current Russian leadership does not even hide its true intentions: what are, for example, the cynical statements of some representatives of United Russia about “Orthodoxy as a moral basis for modernization” and the need to give the people “political mythology”! The position of the Russian Orthodox Church is also understandable: if the people stop thinking irrationally, then the clergy will no longer be able to claim that Orthodoxy is better than Islam, and religion is better than science. This, of course, will put an end to their influence.
Now let's answer the following question: what is the first thing any totalitarian regime is afraid of? And he is afraid of two things: revolution and foreign policy failures, attacks from within and attacks from outside. It is clear that the Kremlin is interested in increasing its influence in the international arena and will make every effort to achieve this. Influence in modern international relations consists of two components:
1) Military and economic power (hard power).
2) "Soft power" (soft power) - the attractiveness of the political ideology, culture, value system of a particular state.
Let's see what theocracy can achieve (and it's getting there!) in these two directions.
Military and economic power in our time is unthinkable without advanced technologies. It goes without saying that the people who develop them are already a danger to the regime.
As rightly pointed out by Prof. E. K. Duluman, a believing scientist can see the "finger of God" anywhere, but not in his own science (otherwise what a scientist he is!). And a supporter of an interdisciplinary approach, actively promoting the convergence and mutual enrichment of various branches of knowledge, “expels” God from several sciences at once.
That is, in order to succeed in its foreign policy endeavors, the Kremlin will have to:
A) Educate people with critical thinking, able to create new knowledge and move the country forward. And a person who is accustomed to questioning everything and not taking anything for granted will sooner or later doubt the correctness of the "policy of the party and government." Many dictatorships collapsed precisely because of "specialists" who enjoyed influence among the masses and turned "modernization from above" into "decentralized modernization."
B) Facilitate the merging of disparate scientific knowledge into a single picture of the world, which will make mystical speculations impossible.
C) Give critical thinkers the right to vote in various power structures, provide them with the opportunity to teach others, to spread their ideas.
It is obvious that the outlook of the new intellectual elite will be extremely non-Orthodox. Churchmen, of course, will not agree with this thesis and will try to prove the opposite using the example of the biographies of believing scientists (I. Newton, G. Leibniz, M. Planck, etc.), although their argument does not hold water.
First, the aforementioned scientists have succeeded not because of religion, but in spite of it. It is well known that I. Newton was seriously engaged in the interpretation of the Apocalypse, but he became famous for the discovery of the law of universal gravitation, and his mystical "revelations" are now of little interest to anyone. Secondly, both Newton and Leibniz were DEISTS, not theists. According to Leibniz, God gave the world immutable physical laws at the moment of creation and since then has not interfered in its development. It is clear that an all-perfect master will create a perfectly tuned machine, having foreseen all possible threats and challenges in advance. Consequently, he will not need to interfere every second (!) In its functioning and repair something, save someone, listen to someone's prayers. That is, all our needs were taken into account even at the creation of the world, which means that it is useless to pray. All our sins were also "programmed" at the beginning of the ages, so that no one is to blame for anything, and no one will go to hell. And there is no place at all for free will in this concept, because the statement about the freedom of human actions is tantamount to the statement about the causelessness of some phenomena in the world, which contradicts the thesis about the immutability of physical laws. In addition, is it worth spending time on comprehending the laws of nature, if they can be revised or even canceled at any time by the “highest command”.
I personally do not understand what Newton's God has in common with the God of traditional religion. I am not going to discuss here the question of the constructiveness of deism, but the fact is obvious that with the help of the concept of deus otiosus ("an idle god") it is almost impossible to manipulate the mass consciousness.
So there will be no Orthodoxy "the moral basis of modernization."
Also, the successful development of the economy is impossible without private initiative (command-administrative management has already proved its failure). At the same time, each person is only interested in increasing the productivity of his own labor when he is confident in the fair distribution of the product produced. And if the government devotes huge resources to supporting a dubious hypothesis, leaving many much more pressing problems unresolved, then it is unlikely that the people will enthusiastically pick up economic initiatives "from above". And in general, any new temple marks the triumph of "metaphysical" human needs over real ones, which is very sad. The French are proud of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, and yet it was built on the bones of the "third estate", exhausted from wars, extortions and crop failures. In principle, the same thing is happening in our time, despite some reduction in scale.
Now let's talk about soft power. Globalization has forced the church to become more open and seriously improve its image in the international arena: reconciliation with Catholics, Old Believers, etc. has been achieved. has already accused the Moscow Patriarchate of the heresies of ecumenism and globalism). After all, God in the Old Testament unequivocally says that false prophets and all kinds of heretics must be destroyed physically. In the 17th century the Orthodox understood His words literally, dreaming of the eradication of the "Latin abomination." Now Catholicism is considered heterodox (but not heterodox!). And the dogmas preached by the Russian Orthodox Church have not changed at all since then!
That is, the so-called interfaith cooperation always occurs to the detriment of the "creed" of each of the parties and therefore cannot have a sustainable positive effect.
Conclusion: religion in the modern world is in a very ambiguous position, since it is dangerous to deny universal human values, and to recognize them means to lose the monopoly on the truth. On the one hand, it is hard for Orthodox Christians to admit that atheistic Confucianism copes with ethical problems no worse than their religion; on the other hand, in the era of globalization they cannot dissociate themselves from the cultural heritage of other peoples.
Therefore, the church declares itself to be a “conductor and interpreter” of universal human values, but this does not help it regain its lost influence, because intermediaries are not needed to assimilate them. We should not forget that humanity is a single biological species, therefore, a person does not need the “revelation of the Lord” to conquer the “interhuman space”. Obviously, the mixture of insincere concessions and secret diplomacy, which is the foreign policy of the Russian Orthodox Church, does not contribute to improving the image of the Russian Federation in the international arena.
In conclusion, consider three possible scenarios for the future of Russia:
1) The Kremlin will radically revise its attitude towards the church (an option from the realm of fantasy, but for the sake of completeness of the analysis, it should also be mentioned). Then many dangers of a foreign and domestic political nature will be avoided.
2) The theocratic state in all directions will suffer a crushing defeat in the international arena, and Russia will become a colony of the United States, China or some other global leader. It is not known whether the transformation of the Russian Federation into a colony will be associated with territorial concessions, the threat of a military invasion, etc., but one thing is clear: even the Kremlin will have to forget about regional leadership. I will not expand on the consequences of such events for the ROC.
3) Socio-economic problems, the degradation of the political system, the loss of control over the minds of the church and the state in the era of globalization will provoke a revolution (a combination of the third option with the second is possible). Worst case scenario. In the second case, we get a third-tier state with gloomy prospects, in the third - ruins and a complete collapse of civilization.
Conclusion: the ROC has no future, we can be sure of that. The question is different: does Russia have a future? Will the ruins of the old have time to bury the sprouts of the new under them, or will we catch on before it's too late?
Dedicated to Russia as I would like to see it.
Mikhail Kukhtin.

Well, I wouldn't say that a new religion will "replace". Because those religions that have already appeared by our time will not disappear anywhere. Firstly, because any religion is a collection of ideas, and an idea cannot be destroyed in principle, and even if the majority of humanity unanimously recognizes a certain idea as crazy, it will always find new supporters. What can we say about such global and personal ideas as religions. After all, even paganism has not completely disappeared in the modern world, although everyone seems to be civilized people ... :) But no, on the contrary, paganism is experiencing a rebirth, it has new adherents, mainly from among people who have become disillusioned with traditional religions. And secondly, because religious affiliation is often passed down from generation to generation through family upbringing. This means that adherents of modern religions will continue to reproduce their own kind, at least from among their own children, and in most cases they will succeed, because it is sometimes very difficult to oppose even common sense to the ideas that a person learned with mother's milk.
In general, modern religions will live on. However, it is absolutely certain that in the distant future new religions will appear, and modern ones will undergo serious changes. And Christianity, and Islam, and Buddhism, and other religions will not remain without transformations. Of course, there will always be so-called "Old Believers" who will not accept these changes and continue to practice the version of their religion that we have now, but most believers will reconsider some provisions of their faith. And we can assume what these transformations will be aimed at.
First, the trend is that religion should respect logic. Notice, not so much even science as a whole, but logic. Most of the atheists and agnostics I have met have said that they are quite willing to believe in the existence of God, but are not ready to accept traditional religion (such as Christianity) almost exclusively because sacred texts such as the Bible contain a lot of logical contradictions. And give examples. And yes, at this moment, I, a believer, always have nothing to answer them, because there really are contradictions in the Bible. Another thing is that they do not interfere with me personally to believe in God, because I understand perfectly well that the Bible was written by people, not God. And yes, people were wrong, they were wrong about something, people were subject to a large number of stereotypes, which we are now debunking. However, this is indeed one of the problems of modern religions and every religion must solve it. Leaving everything as it is will not work. This means that modern theologians, priests and superiors of each denomination will sooner or later be faced with the need to streamline the sacred texts created many centuries ago in such a way that the ends meet. And every contradiction that existed, one way or another to explain. Otherwise, the attitude to religion turns out to be very frivolous, as to "fiction", in which one should not look for logic. Therefore, in order to continue to exist, religions will be brought into more conformity with simple formal logic than they are now. And new religions will also be friends with logic, there will be a minimum number of inconsistencies in their provisions. This is already becoming important to many.
Secondly, in the distant future, a new gender order is definitely waiting for you and me, which means that religious dogmas based on gender stereotypes, negative attitudes towards same-sex love, abortion, etc., will be revised. Despite the fact that the priests of each religion will resist these changes to a greater or lesser extent, the process has already begun. Now many representatives of gender and sexual minorities are experiencing difficulties with their faith only because the superiors of their faiths suffer from ancient prejudices and bring them into religion as the ultimate truth. In the future, these problems will also be solved, because otherwise the space for the spread of religion will inevitably shrink, and no one needs this, and first of all, this is not necessary for the priests themselves. And new religions may even pay special attention to gender and other equality.
And in general, the religions of the future will be much less ethically overloaded, because already now many people are coming to the conclusion that they are sufficiently developed as individuals to determine their moral standards on their own, and not blindly rely on the dogmas and prohibitions dictated by one or another religion. I often meet people who believe in God, or at least are ready to accept that "there is something there," but they absolutely do not want religion to tell them how to live. And who wants it? :)
Thirdly, the religions of the future will be much more peaceful, simply because everyone is pretty tired of shaking at the thought of a nuclear confrontation. It is quite possible that new religions will include the concept of peaceful coexistence with other faiths as a matter of course.
And fourthly, modern religions will reconsider their ideas about how officials and superiors, such as priests and patriarchs, should behave. Well, at least they will forbid them to have their own little tobacco empires. :)
So it goes.

18.09.11 The number of believers in the world - at least in developed, so-called civilized countries - is declining. And the number of people who openly declare themselves atheists is growing year by year.

Such results were obtained by a group of American scientists led by Daniel Abrams from Northwestern University and Richard Weiner from the University of Arizona, after analyzing statistical data over the past hundred years. The researchers reported this at a recent meeting of the American Physical Society, which was held in Dallas.

Statistics were collected from the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and a number of European countries. It turned out that only atheists steadily multiplied in all of them. Most of them are now in the US and Holland - about 40 percent. But the leader in this sense is the Czech Republic, in which more than 60 percent of the atheists.

To explain the rise in anti-religiousness, scholars have turned to dispassionate mathematics. And they tried to simulate the situation, armed with a simple hypothesis. It assumes that people tend to join the social group in which membership seems most beneficial to them. For example, someone becomes a believer by watching numerous representatives of this group and realizing that praying and worshiping God is very useful for one reason or another - spiritual or even material.

Weiner explained that similarly, people decide which language to speak if there are several options. Like, say, in Peru: in Spanish or native - Quechua or Aymara. The latter are gradually dying out, since knowledge of them does not promise any serious benefits.

Approximately the same way some people solve the issues of party affiliation. They simply choose the most influential, and are not guided by belief in certain ideals. The situation is similar with religion.

According to Abrams and Weiner, people believe that the benefits of religion are becoming less and less. And in the foreseeable future, this will inevitably lead to the fact that there will be no believers left.

The coming era of atheism is evidenced not only by statistics. The forecast is also supported by a mathematical model (based on non-linear dynamics), which shows almost complete agreement with it - with statistics. That is, the theoretically calculated number of people who abandoned the faith almost coincided with the real one.

However: scientists do not insist that they discovered the truth. And they recognize that the world around them can be more complicated than the formulas that seem to fit it.

No... God is still needed

In 2008, the John Templeton Religious Foundation, which regularly supports scientists involved in the search for God and the scientific foundations of faith, donated £2 million (more than $3 million) to find the reasons why people become religious. Money is mastered by Justin Barrett, a well-known psychologist from Oxford University, with numerous colleagues from different countries.

A project with a simple title "Why do people believe in God?" was designed for three years. That is, in the current year, 2011, we can expect final conclusions. But preliminary ones appear from time to time. And they contradict the atheistic mathematics of Abrams and Weiner. There is a lot of data that proves: religiosity is useful.

United by one faith are more tenacious

Canadian psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Sharif of the University of British Columbia, who are working on the project with Barrett, believe that religious people are better adapted to life. Especially to her hardships. After all, faith unites them. And united are strong mutual assistance. This means that they are more likely to survive in difficult times. And, therefore, to pass on their "religious genes" by inheritance.

As a result, evolution has led to the fact that almost every person has faith in God. This is the opinion of scientists. They found it by conducting a comparative analysis of various closed communes and communities, of which there were many in the United States in the 19th century. Among them were both religious and secular, for example, based on the ideas of communism. And it turned out that religious communities, on average, lasted much longer (see chart).

Religion, - says Ara Norenzayan, - unites according to such principles as loyalty to the community and readiness to sacrifice personal interests for the sake of society. In addition, the survival of religious (but not secular) communities directly depends on the severity of the charter. The more restrictions the community imposed on its members and the more complex rituals they had to perform, the longer it existed. This is good for evolution.

Worshiping the Invisible Leader Keeps Order

French anthropologist Pascal Boyer of Washington University in St. Louis notes another specific feature of human thinking that makes us extremely receptive to religious ideas. This is the ability to obey persons who are currently absent. Without this, large organized collectives could not exist.

What order can there be in a hierarchically organized tribe if people perform their duties only in the presence of a leader or a parent? asks Dr. Boyer. - The ability to maintain a relationship with the “ideal image” of an absent person is a most useful adaptation that allows you to maintain order and follow the rules of the hostel.

In most cultures, the behavior of people is "monitored" by otherworldly beings - deities. That is, they perform the function of an absent leader or parent.

TOTAL

Scientists prove that religion is useful, using the examples of communities of the past. But we live in a different time, in which other trends have clearly emerged. People - especially in the Western world - stop seeing the point in being religious. And they leave the faith. Do they lose their cohesion? Ability to face adversity? Do they lose to those whose faith only grows stronger? Scientists have not yet given answers to these questions.

BY THE WAY

'Genes for faith in God' found in humans

Dean Hammer, director of the National Institute of Genetic Structures and Cancer Control, questioned the religious belief that faith in God is fueled by spiritual enlightenment arising from the influence of divine power. And he announced that it was all about special electrical impulses in the brain. But especially in the genes that are responsible for them.

The scientist's research showed that deeply religious people have in their body a gene they called VMAT2. And atheists do not have such a gene.

It turns out that atheists are mutants.

Such a shocking conclusion was made on the basis of a study of more than 2000 DNA subjects.

According to Hammer, it is possible that Christians could have inherited the “gene of faith in God” from Jesus Christ himself, and Muslims from Muhammad. The doctor, however, also recalls the Prophet Muhammad, whose gene could be inherited by Muslims, and the Buddha, who awarded the Buddhists with the appropriate heredity. Although these respected personalities were not gods.

Following the logic of Hammer, it would be necessary to admit that the Satanists got the genes of the devil, and those who believe in aliens - from aliens. Brad, it seems. Although it may turn out that this same VMAT2 has a universal property and awakens the desire for the spiritual and mystical in general.

My research, - Hammer justifies himself, - does not undermine faith in the Almighty. On the contrary, the existence of a “gene of faith in God” once again proves the genius of the Creator, who “gave” this gene to man.

Then what is happening now? Where does this gene disappear if the number of believers decreases? What is the reason for mutations? Is it the machinations of hellish forces?

Why the share of Muslims in the world population is growing the fastest, and the number of religiously unaffiliated is decreasing

The religious characteristics of the world are changing very rapidly, primarily due to differences in birth rates and the size of the younger generation in the spheres of influence of the world's major religions, as well as the fact that people change religion. For the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion. These current trends will last until 2050…

- The number of Muslims is almost equal to the number of Christians in the world.

“While there will be more atheists, agnostics and other people who do not associate themselves with any particular religion in countries such as the United States and France, their proportion will decrease in the total number of inhabitants of the earth.

— The number of Buddhists will remain approximately the same as in 2010, and there will be more Hindus and Jews than now.

- In Europe, the number of Muslims will be 10% of the total population.

“In India, Hinduism will still remain the majority religion, however, its Muslim population will also become the largest in the world, overtaking the Muslims of Indonesia.

- In the US, the number of Christians from three-quarters of the population in 2010 will drop to two-thirds in 2050, and Judaism will no longer be the largest non-Christian religion. There will be more Muslims than people who define themselves as Jews on the basis of religion.

Four out of every ten Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

These are some of the trends highlighted by the Pew Research Center's new population projections. Projections are based on the current coverage and geographic distribution of the world's major religions, age differences, birth and death rates, international migration, and patterns of transition from one religion to another.

As of 2010, Christianity was by far the largest religion in the world, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of the world's total population of 6.9 billion. Islam ranked second with 1.6 billion adherents, i.e. 23% of all people.

However, if the current demographic trend continues, Islam will almost catch up with the leader by the middle of the 21st century. Between 2010 and 2050, the total population of the Earth is expected to grow to 9.3 billion, that is, by 35%. Over the same period, the number of Muslims - among whom on average there are many young people who provide high birth rates - is projected to increase by 73%. The number of Christians should also increase, but more slowly, at about the same rate (35%) as the general increase in the population of the Earth.

As a result, according to Pew Research Center forecasts, by 2050 the number of Muslims (2.8 billion or 30% of the population) will be almost equal to the number of Christians (2.9 billion or 31%), perhaps for the first time in history.

With the exception of Buddhism, all of the world's religions are poised for at least a small increase in absolute terms in the coming decades. The number of Buddhists in the world is expected to remain about the same due to low birth rates and aging populations in countries such as China, Thailand and Japan.

The number of Hindus worldwide is projected to increase by 34%, from just over a billion to nearly 1.4 billion, roughly in step with the average growth of the entire population on earth. Jews, the smallest religious group for which a separate forecast has been made, are expected to grow by 16%, from just over 14 million worldwide in 2010 to 16.1 million in 2050.

Context

Islam is not like all religions

Globes 05.02.2017

Religion changed its mind about leaving Russia

01/20/2017

Are earthly religions adapting to aliens?

Nautilus 11/30/2016

Three poles that form in the world

Czech Pozice 11/16/2016

Is France still a secular state?

Russian service RFI 04.10.2016

The number of adherents of various religions, including African traditional beliefs, Chinese folk beliefs, Native American beliefs and Aboriginal Australian beliefs, is projected to increase by 11%, from 405 million to nearly 450 million.

However, despite the growth in the absolute number of adherents of folk religions, Judaism and "other religions" (the entire combined category as a whole), they do not keep up with the general growth of the entire population of the earth. Each of these groups is projected to make up a smaller percentage of the population in 2050 than it did in 2010.

Similarly, the share of religiously unaffiliated people in the total population of the earth will decrease, although their absolute number will increase. Censuses and polls show that in 2010 there were about 1.1 billion atheists, agnostics, and people who do not identify with any particular religion. By 2050, the number of unaffiliated should reach 1.2 billion. But as for the percentage that will be allotted to them of the total number of people, by the middle of this century it is projected to decrease from 16% to 13%.

At the same time, however, the share of religiously unaffiliated people is expected to increase in the population of much of Europe and North America. In the US, for example, the number of unaffiliated will grow from about 16% of the total population (including children) in 2010 to 26% in 2050.

The example of a group of religiously unaffiliated people shows how strongly geographical differences will influence the pattern of the growth of religions in the coming decades. One of the main determinants of future growth is where each group is geographically concentrated today. Religions with a large number of adherents in developing countries, where birth rates are high and infant mortality is gradually decreasing, are likely to grow rapidly. The global growth of Islam and Christianity, for example, is predicted to be fueled by sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, religiously unaffiliated people are now densely concentrated in low-fertility places where populations are aging, such as Europe, North America, Japan, and China.

Globally, Muslims have the highest birth rates, averaging 3.1 children per woman, well above the replacement level (2.1) required to maintain a stable population. Christians are in second place, with 2.7 children per woman. The Hindu birth rate is 2.4, about the same as the world average of 2.5. The birth rate among Jews on average in the world is 2.3, which is also above the minimum level of reproduction. Birth rates in all other groups are too low to support the population: folk beliefs - 1.8 children per woman, other religions - 1.7, religiously unaffiliated - 1.7 and Buddhists - 1.6.

In the coming decades, Christianity is expected to suffer the largest cumulative loss due to change of faith. Overall, about 40 million people are projected to convert to Christianity, while 106 million will abandon it, for the most part choosing to join the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated (see chart above).

In total, the unaffiliated group will add 97 million people and lose 36 million people due to religious change, for a net gain of 61 million people by 2050. A modest "net gain" from religion change is expected for Muslims (3 million), Folk Belief Group (3 million) and Other Religions Composite Group (2 million). Jews due to change of religion will lose about 300,000 people, while Buddhists will lose 3 million.

International migration is another factor influencing the projected size of religious groups in different regions and countries.

Predicting the future directions of migration is difficult, as migration is often linked to the politics of world governments and international events, which can change rapidly. Therefore, many demographic projections do not include migration in their models. But in collaboration with researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, Pew Research has developed an innovative method of using data from past migration patterns to estimate the religious composition of migration flows for decades to come. (See Chapter 1 for more on how these projections are made.) .

© RIA Novosti, Alexey Agaryshev

The impact of migration can be seen in the examples in the graph to the right, which compare scenarios predicted with and without migration in regions where it matters the most. In Europe, for example, where migration must be taken into account along with other demographic factors such as birth rates and age as the cause of population change, the Muslim proportion is expected to rise from 5.9% in 2010 to 10.2% in 2050. Excluding migration, the share of Muslims in the European population is projected to be almost two percent lower (8.4%). In North America, if migration is included in the projection model, the proportion of Hindus will almost double over the coming decades, from 0.7% in 2010 to 1.3% in 2050. Excluding migration, the proportion of Hindus in the population of the region will remain almost unchanged (0. eight%).

In the Middle East and North Africa, continued Christian migration to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia) is expected to offset the exodus of Christians from other countries in the region . If migration were not taken into account in forecasts for 2050, by that time, according to calculations, the proportion of Christians there would have fallen below 3%. With migration included, it will be above 3% (down from 4% in 2010).

After 2050

This report talks about how the religious landscape of our planet will change if current demographic trends remain in place. Year after year, however, the possibility of unforeseen circumstances—war, famine, epidemics, technical innovations, political upheavals, and so on—that can change the size of a particular religious group does not diminish. Because of the difficulty in predicting events more than a few decades into the future, forecasts end at 2050.

Readers may wonder, however, what happens if the demographic trajectories recorded in the report are extended further into the second half of this century? Given the rate at which the proportion of Muslims in the world is projected to increase, will Muslims really outnumber Christians? And if so, when?

The answer depends on how the trend can continue, as described in Chapter 1. If the basic forecasting model is extended beyond 2050, the share of Muslims in the world population will roughly equal the share of Christians around 2070 at around 32% for each group. After that, the number of Muslims will overtake Christians, but both religious groups will continue to grow at about the same pace, as shown in the graph above. By 2100, there will be about 1% more Muslims in the world (35%) than Christians (34%).

© AFP 2016, Amos Gumulira High school girls in Mchinji, Malawi

The predicted growth in the number of Muslims and Christians will be due in large measure to the fact that the population of Africa will continue to grow. Due to the high concentration of Muslims and Christians in this region with a high birth rate, the share of both groups in the total population of the earth will increase. Together, these two largest religious groups will cover more than two-thirds of the world's population (69%) in 2100, up from 61% in 2050 and 55% in 2010.

It should be reiterated, however, that many factors can alter these developmental curves. For example, if a large proportion of China's population converts to Christianity (a possibility discussed in this box), this phenomenon alone could strengthen Christianity's current position as the world's largest religion. Or if a shift towards unaffiliation becomes common in countries with large numbers of Muslims—as is now the case in countries with large numbers of Christians—this trend could slow or even reverse the growth of the Muslim group.

Forecasts at the level of regions and countries

In addition to forecasts at the global level, this report talks about forecasts for religious changes in 198 countries and territories with a population of at least 100,000 people, where 99.9% of the world's population lived in 2010. Demographic estimates for an additional 36 countries and territories are included in the regional and global totals throughout the report. The report divides the world into six major regions and looks at potential changes in the religious composition of each region that could occur between 2010 and 2050, based on the assumption that current migration and other demographic trends will continue.

Mainly due to high fertility rates, the population of sub-Saharan Africa is projected to experience its fastest growth period, rising from 12% of the global population in 2010 to about 20% in 2050. The Middle East and North Africa region is also projected to grow faster than the world as a whole, expanding from 5% of the world's population to 6%. The constant growth of both regions will contribute to the growth of the proportion of the Muslim population of the earth. In addition, the Christian population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to double, rising from 517 million in 2010 to 1.1 billion in 2050. The proportion of all Christians living in sub-Saharan Africa will increase from 24% in 2010 to 38% in 2050.

At the same time, the share of the Asia-Pacific region in the world population will decrease (53% in 2050 instead of 59% in 2010). This will lead to a slower growth of religions concentrated in the region, including Buddhism and Chinese folk religions, as well as a slower growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated residents of the region. The only exception would be Hinduism, which is predominantly concentrated in India, which has a younger population and higher birth rates than China and Japan. As stated earlier, Hinduism is projected to grow roughly in step with global population growth. India's large Muslim population is also set for rapid growth. Although India will continue to have a Hindu majority, by 2050 the Muslim population of this country will also be the largest in the world, overtaking the Indonesian.

© flickr.com, Christopher Michel

The share of other geographic regions in the global population will also decline: Europe is projected to fall from 11% to 8%, Latin America and the Caribbean from 9% to 8%, and North America from 5% to just under 5%.

Europe is the only region whose population as a whole will decrease. In the coming decades, there will be 100 million fewer Christians in Europe, from 553 million to 454 million. Remaining the largest religious group in Europe, Christians are predicted to cover less than three-quarters of the population, as they do now, but less than two-thirds. It is expected that by 2050 almost a quarter of all Europeans (23%) will be religiously unaffiliated, and the number of Muslims in the region will increase from 5.9% in 2010 to 10%. During the same period, the number of Hindus in Europe will almost double, from just under 1.4 million (0.2% of Europe's population) to nearly 2.7% (0.4%), largely due to immigration. The same trend appears to be true for Buddhists, who are projected to increase from 1.4 million to 2.5 million.

In North America, Muslims and followers of "other religions" are the fastest growing groups. For example, in the United States, the share of the population belonging to "other religions" is projected to more than double, albeit starting from a very small base - from 0.6% to 1.5%. The number of Christians is projected to decrease from 78% of the US population in 2010 to 66% in 2050, while the share of the religiously unaffiliated will increase from 16% to 26%. And it looks like there will be more Muslims (2.1%) than Jews (1.4%) in the US by mid-century.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Christianity will remain the largest religious group, covering 89% of the population in 2050, down slightly from 90% in 2010. The religiously unaffiliated population of Latin America is projected to grow both in absolute terms and as a percentage, from about 45 million or 8% in 2010 to 65 million or 9% in 2050.

Religious Majority Change

Some countries are predicted to have a change in religious majorities by 2050 from what they were in 2010. The number of Christian-majority countries should decrease from 159 to 151, due to the fact that the number of Christians will be less than 50% of the population, in Australia , Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Macedonia and the UK.

© AP Photo, Boris Grdanoski Wedding celebration in Macedonia

Muslims are expected to make up more than 50% of the population in 51 countries by 2050, two more than in 2010, as they become the religious majority in the Republic of Macedonia and Nigeria. But Nigeria's Christian population will also remain very large. What's more, by 2050 Nigerian Christians are predicted to be the third largest group of Christians in the world, after the United States and Brazil.

As of 2050, the largest religious group in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands should be the religiously unaffiliated.

About these predictions

While many have made predictions about the future of religions, these are the first official demographic projections based on data on age, births, deaths, migrations and conversions for numerous religious groups around the world. Demographers from Pew Research in Washington and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, have collected input data from more than 2,500 surveys, surveys, and population registers—a work that has taken six years and is still incomplete.

These demographic projections cover eight major groups: Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Christians, folk believers, non-religious people, and people who are not religiously affiliated (see Appendix C: Definition of Religious Groups). Since censuses and surveys in many countries do not provide information on religious subgroups—such as Sunnis and Shiites in Islam, or Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox in Christianity—the forecasts treat religious groups as homogeneous. Data on the composition of the religiously unaffiliated group is also not available in many countries. As a result, it is not possible to model separate predictions for atheists or agnostics.

The forecasting model was developed in collaboration with researchers from the Age and Cohort Change project at IIASA, world leaders in demographic forecasting methodology. The model uses an improved version of the cohort-component method, which is commonly used by demographers to predict population growth. She starts with basic age groups, or cohorts, separated by gender and religious affiliation. For each cohort, a forecast is made by adding potential future adherents (immigrants and people who have adopted this religion as adults) and subtracting possible losses (death, emigration, people who leave this religion) year by year. The youngest cohorts, aged 0 to 4 years, are created on the basis of birth age categories for each female reproductive age group (15-49) and children are assigned to the mother's region. You can read more about this in the Methodology.

In the process of collecting input data and developing a predictive model, Pew Research Center published preliminary reports on the current size and geographic location of major religious groups, including Muslims (2009), Christians (2011) and data for several other faiths (2012). The original set of forecasts for one religious group, Muslims, was published in 2011, however, it did not take into account the change of faith.

Some social theorists have suggested that as countries develop economically, more of their inhabitants will refuse to identify themselves with a particular religion. Although this has been the main trend in some parts of the world, especially Europe, it is not yet clear if this pattern is universal. In any case, our projections are not based on a theory that links economic development to secularization.

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Instead, these projections build on current recorded trends in religion change in those countries for which such information was available (70 countries in total). In addition, the projections reflect the UN's expectation that in countries with currently high fertility rates, fertility rates will gradually decline over the coming decades as women's education levels rise. Projections also suggest that life expectancy will gradually rise in most countries. These and other key inputs and assumptions are detailed in Chapter 1 and the Methodology (Appendix A).

Since forecasts of religious change have never before been made on such a scale, a few words of caution must be said. Demographic projections are assumptions based on current population data and a preliminary estimate of demographic trends such as declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy in specific countries. Forecasts are what will happen if actual data and current trends continue. But many events—scientific discoveries, armed conflicts, social movements, political upheavals, and much, much more—can change demographic trends in unforeseen ways. That is why projections are limited to a period of 40 years, and in the subsequent chapters of this report we will try to give an idea of ​​how different the results could be if the key points were different.

For example, China's population of 1.3 billion people (as of 2010) has a very strong influence on global trends. At the moment, about 5% of the Chinese are Christians, and more than 50% are religiously unaffiliated. Since there are no reliable data on religious conversion in China, these projections do not include any assumptions about religious conversion in this most populous country in the world. But if Christianity spreads in China in the coming decades, as some experts predict, then by 2050 the total number of Christians on earth could be higher than predicted, and the decrease in the proportion of the religiously unaffiliated in the world could be even more significant (more on the possible impact of the process of change of faith for China, see Chapter 1).

As a final reminder, readers should keep in mind that within each major religious group there is a range of degrees of belief and observance. Predictions are based on the number of people who self-identify with a particular religious group, regardless of their level of adherence to the rules. Understanding what it means to be a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, or any other faith can change from person to person, country to country, and decade to decade.

Words of gratitude

These demographic projections were made by the Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which is dedicated to analyzing religious change and its impact on society around the world. Funding for the project was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation.

Many members of the Religion & Public Life Project at the Pew Research Center have been involved in this hard work. Conrad Hackett was the lead researcher on the project and the main author of this report. Alan Cooperman became editor-in-chief. Anne Shi and Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa were the most significant contributors to data collection, storage and analysis. Bill Webster created the graphs, while Stacy Rosenberg and Ben Wormald oversaw the development of interactive data presentations and the Global Religious Futures website. Sandra Stencel, Greg Smith, Michael Lipka and Aleksandra Sandstrom assisted with editing. The report figures were verified by Shea, Esparanza Ochoa, Claire Gecewicz and Angelina Theodorou.

Several researchers from the Age and Cohort Change project at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis have collaborated on the projections, providing invaluable expertise in advanced (multi-component) demographic modeling and input data standardization. Marcin Stonawski wrote the groundbreaking software for these forecasts and led the data collection and analysis for Europe. Michaela Potančoková standardized fertility data. Vegard Skirbekk coordinated the MIASA research. Finally, Guy Abel of the Vienna Institute of Demography helped construct the country-level migration flow data used in these projections.

Over the past six years, some former Pew Research Center employees have also been instrumental in creating these demographic projections. Phillip Connor provided background information on migration, created descriptions of outcomes and modes of migration, and helped write sections for each religious group and geographic region. Noble Kuriakose was involved in almost all phases of the project and helped develop the demographics and methodology section. Former intern Joseph Naylor helped design the maps, and David McClendon, another former intern, contributed to research on global trends of religious change. The original concept for this study was developed by Luis Lugo, former Project Manager for Religion & Public Life at the Pew Research Center, with assistance from former Principal Scientist Brian J. Grim and Visiting Senior Scientist Mehtab Karim .

Other Pew Research Center staff members who provided editorial and scientific advice include Michael Dimock, Claudia Deane, Scott Keeter, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D'Vera Cohn (D "Vera Cohn). Communications was handled by Katherine Ritchey and Russ Oates.

We also received very helpful advice and feedback on parts of the report from Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt, political economists at the American Enterprise Institute; Roger Finke, Director of the Religion Data Archives Association and Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University; Carl Haub, Senior Demographer, Bureau of Population Information; Todd Johnson, world Christianity expert and director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, Gordon Conwell of Theological Seminary; Ariela Keysar, Associate Professor and Associate Director, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College; Chaeyoon Lim, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Arland Thornton, Research Fellow, Center for Population Research, Michigan State University; Jenny Trinitapoli, Associate Professor of Sociology, Demography, and Religious Studies, Pennsylvania State University; David Voas, Professor of Population Studies and Acting Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex; Robert Wuthnow, professor of sociology and director of the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University; and Fenggang Yang, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University.

Because our consultants and experts led the data collection and methodology, Pew Research Center is solely responsible for interpreting and reporting the data.

Report guide

The remainder of the report goes into more detail about forecasts from different angles. The first chapter looks at the demographic factors that shape projections, including sections on fertility rates, life expectancy, age structure, religious change, and migration. The next chapter details the forecasts by religious group, separately for Christians, Muslims, religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, adherents of folk or traditional religions and followers of "other religions" (considered as a collective group) and Jews. The final article provides detailed forecasts for geographic regions, namely Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa.

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

ROSINFORMBURO on the proposal to reduce the age of marriage in Russia
Kommersant and Realnoe Vremya on the proposal to complicate the rules of divorce
"News Today" about fictitious marriages for a residence permit in Latvia
Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Russia's migration policy
Moskovsky Komsomolets about corruption in the migration service
Novye Izvestiya about migrants and terrorism
Sputnik on the importance of migrant remittances for Uzbekistan
"Kommersant" on the abolition of preferential treatment for Ukrainians
FINANCE.UA about emigration from Ukraine
"Izvestia" on the violation of the rights of migrants during obstetrics
Kommersant about the death of a Tajik boy in St. Petersburg
"Financial Times" about problems with aid to refugees in the EU

… about the future of world religions

Demographic projections see Islam as the world's number one religion by around 2070, while France is the first to see a significant increase in the number of non-denominationals.
"The 21st century will be the century of religion, or it will not exist at all." The famous phrase of André Malraux, which, as a mantra is repeated from generation to generation, really seems justified against the backdrop of the current deafening rise of religions. The triumph of modernity, it would seem, should have forced them to retreat, but they are only expanding. By the middle of this century, Muslims should equal in number with Christians, and then surpass them. However, before turning to this issue, it is necessary to consider the current dynamics.
The demographic projections for an increase in the world's population are overlaid with projections for an increase in the number of believers. It is difficult to say whether this number really refers to active believers or simply includes people belonging to a particular religious tradition. The rise of spirituality compensates for the decline of some dogmas. In other conditions, the assertion of fundamentalism prevails. In any case, the geopolitics of confessions clearly leads to the expansion of the role of Islam in the world and allocates a very original place for France.

Statistics
Religious statistics often resemble acrobatics. The denial of others is superimposed on the fantasies of some. The process of ethnic and religious replacement on the one hand and joyful coexistence on the other. In order to clearly imagine the situation, at least in terms of the stated beliefs, there is data. Year after year, Futuribles magazine tells about attempts to evaluate religious processes and transformations in the world.
Among the sources of forecasts, The Pew Research Center, which presented a serious and detailed study last spring, should be highlighted. It relies on data available from around the world on the difference in birth and death rates, migration flows and (most difficult) the transition of people from one faith to another. The last point is a technical innovation: it is about assessing changes in religions, whether it is the departure of old followers or the emergence of new ones. The methodology here is very subtle, but such work is very important, because it is necessary to get rid of the largely hereditary view of religious affiliation.
Having dealt with these methodological clarifications, one can ask oneself the following question: what might the religious picture of the world look like in 2050? Christians will probably retain the majority. Islam in all its diversity will grow faster than all other religions. During this period, the number of Muslims could grow by 75% (+1.2 billion), Christians by 35% (+750 million), and Hindus by 34%. By 2050, there will be about the same number of Muslims (2.8 billion, 30% of the world's population) as Christians (2.9 billion, 31%). Finally, Muslims will bypass Christians only in 2070.

Centers will shift
Geopolitically, the centers of Christianity and Islam will shift. India will remain a majority Hindu country, but by 2050 its Muslim population will be larger than that of Indonesia and Pakistan. In Europe, Muslims will account for 10% of the population. 40% of Christians will live in Central and South Africa. Buddhists will remain concentrated in Asia at a steady 500 million. There are also data on "folklore" religions (African animists, beliefs of the natives, various cults), but in any case they play only an extremely insignificant role.
The intersection of the charts of Islam and Christianity (perhaps it will happen later than we usually think) follows mainly from the current birth rates: 2.5 children per woman on average in the world, 1.6 for Buddhists, 3.1 for Muslims, 2 .7 for Christians, 2.4 for Hindus, and 1.7 for "non-aligned" (atheists, agnostics, people with no religious affiliation). Their ranks will grow significantly, but the relative share will decrease (from 16% to 13%). In some countries, the growth of this group will be the most visible of all changes. So it will be in the USA and, oddly enough, in France.
The former "eldest daughter" of the church was a predominantly Christian (63%) country in 2010. The current 7.5% share of Muslims will rise to 11% by the middle of this century. However, the most impressive change will be the increase in the proportion of "non-aligned" from 28% to 44%. More and more believers in the world and less and less in France. France will be the religious exception in a world that will become predominantly Muslim in the third quarter of the 21st century. Our champions of secularism have reason to rejoice.

Religion is not a constant
Only now, all these figures are just forecasts that are made using the continuation of current trends. So it doesn't have to be exactly the same. Looking ahead means paying attention to forecasts. As well as opposite scenarios and possible changes. Religions try to make a connection with the transcendent, but they themselves cannot be called a constant. They are changing. And while demographic trends are definitely changing the world, the future of the great religions is shrouded in mist.
Be that as it may, with France everything is more or less clear. The Pew Research Center draws on French statistics and concludes that out of 40 million Christians (as of 2010), only 30 million will remain by 2050. This is despite the fact that the total population of the country will increase by 6 million people. Recall that the figures are based on the self-determination of people in relation to tradition or culture, and not religious practice. The question is sociological, not theological.
According to the same data (once again, they are based on self-determination, not traditions and rituals), the current Muslim population of France is estimated at 4.7 million people, which, by and large, corresponds to classical estimates and extrapolations. By 2050, the number of Muslims should increase to 7.5 million (there is no question of the strength of their faith). During the same period, the number of Buddhists will increase from 280,000 to 400,000, and Hindus from 30,000 to 70,000.
The Muslim population will increase by 60%, and the number of non-believers will grow from 18 to 31 million, i.e. by 72%. In any case, the exact numbers do not matter much here: the main thing is the general trends. And they paint a very interesting picture.